Is Netflix Really Saving Cinema?
‘The Irishman’ and ‘Marriage Story’ are Oscar-worthy films that screened in theaters first. That sounds familiar.
There were supposed to be newspapers and phone booths in the downstairs lobby of the Belasco Theatre, the 112-year-old Broadway showplace on West 44th Street that Netflix rented and repurposed to premiere Martin Scorsese’s new film, The Irishman. Scorsese’s 3-hour-and-29-minute (with no intermission) mobster epic tells the story of labor leader Jimmy Hoffa’s disappearance. It takes place over six decades, with the film’s stars — Robert De Niro, Al Pacino, and Joe Pesci — digitally de-aged and pre-aged to play the characters over the years.
Netflix, which has spent many millions to alter how those actors look on screen, had similarly, I’d heard, re-aged the Belasco for The Irishman, placing 1950s-style phone booths in the lobby across from the concession stand. In each booth, one of the film’s stars or Scorsese would speak to anyone who got in and picked up the phone. Not live, of course, but via dialogue repurposed from the film or, in Scorsese’s case, in a special prerecorded message.
Next to the concession stand, where playgoers usually buy wine and beer, Netflix, I’d also heard, had placed large stacks of newspapers they’d printed to look the way…
